Cusp behaviors are chosen as goals when possible. They are behaviors that significantly expand a client’s repertoire to new settings, new contingencies and new stimulus controls. Learning to read is a cusp behavior that gains access to a whole set of new learning opportunities, for example. Also, a baby learning to crawl is a behavioral […]
Effective self-management programs utilize the individuals ability to set criteria for reinforcement. This is in Chapter 27 of Cooper. Going public with one’s desire to change (to recruit support) and the ability to evaluate and redesign the original program if self-monitoring data indicates an adjustment is needed are important components to a successful program. It […]
Cooper, Heron and Heward (2007) outline 6 advantages to graphic displays of behavior data: Provide an immediate visual record of data allow the ability to explore behavioral variations of data in realtime serve as judgement aides that help interpret intervention results allow for visual analysis unbiased, independent judgement may be made from graphs serve as […]
3 characteristics of a good behavioral definition are: Objective – referring only to observable characteristics Clear – unambiguous Complete – setting boundaries, what is to be included and what is to be excluded
Prediction, verification and replication. Prediction involves anticipating what you think will happen in the future. Verification is showing that dependent variables (DVs) would not change without intervention (independent variables: IVs). Replication involves taking away the intervention, reintroducing it, and obtaining similar outcomes. Level, trend and variability have to do with the visual analysis of graphed […]
A task analysis is an intervention which links a series of behaviors to create a more complex behavior chain. Constructing the intervention chain must be done BEFORE the intervention begins. One should also use the client’s repertoire for selecting appropriate interventions. An evaluation of the client’s verbal repertoire and pre-attending skills are done before the […]
Interobserver Agreement (IOA) refers to the degree to which two or more independent observers report the same observed values after measuring the same events. 4 Benefits of IOA Determine the competence of new observers (when IOA is low) Detect observer drift over the course of a study (when IOA is low) Increases confidence that the […]
A stimulus prompt is a cue that makes the Sd for the target behavior more prominent. For example, in order to encourage someone to push a button, you could make it big and a bright color. Stimulus shaping is a changing of the physical dimensions of the stimulus over time. For example, making the button […]
According to matching law, organisms distribute their behavior between two or more concurrent schedules of reinforcement. That is, if a behavior is reinforced 60 percent of the time in one situation and 40 percent of the time in the other situation, the behavior will occur 60 percent of the time in the first situation and […]
Alternating treatment design has the following advantages: Efficiently compares intervention effectiveness It does not require withdraw It can be used to assess generalization effects It does not include a return to baseline It often doesn’t include a baseline to begin with
Differential reinforcement in general is a scheduled procedure where the target behavior is being put on extinction by reinforcing something else than the original target behavior. It is not a punishment of the target procedure but does act to reduce that target behavior. The important thing is that the target behavior that is being reduced […]
Parametric analysis is used to evaluate a range of values for an intervention (independent variable). For example, if you were determining the range of values for “time out” that are most effective. You would conduct a parametric analysis using 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. Parametric analysis can be thought of as […]